Don’t let your dogs get cold!
Cold weather is coming. Make sure your hot dog cart is ready for it!
Hot food sells pretty well in the spring and fall. It slows down a bit in the “dog days” of August.
But when winter sets in hot dogs sell like crazy. There’s nothing like hot food on a cold day!
One half of the secret to selling hot dogs in the winter time is to keep your body warm. Especially your feet.
Be sure to dress for the weather in removable layers and get the best boots you can afford.
The other half of the secret is making sure your hot dog cart is prepped to perform at it’s best when the temperature dips.
Here are two articles that I always re-publish this time of year. Be sure to read both of them. Your cart (and your wallet) will thank you.
Video: Hot Dog Cart Winterizing
Article: Winterizing A Hot Dog Cart
Many of you are putting your carts up for the winter but many more of you sell all year ’round. What do you do to get ready for winter? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks!
-Steve
About all I have to do is take out the battery and blow out the waterlines. I drain the water tank and empty the gray water, scrub down the cooler and give the cart a generally good scrub. That’s about it for me. This year I found a place to store it indoors where the temp is maintained at least at 50 degrees. I keep it covered and it’s put to bed for a long winter’s nap.
For me it’s the best time of the year. 80-85% of my sells are done in the fall & winter now. Since I changed my way of selling to the public it works a lot better in the winter.
Even if it’s 30 degrees outside we still do great.
Congrats! What did you change Kenny?
We have devoted most of our sells to catering. When I first started this hot dog thing
I knew about catering but never could get a handle on it because everything was so
complicated about it. What I mean is a birthday party would be one price a Mfg. lunchon would be another price a company pic-nic would be something different. There were so many different prices it was awful trying to keep up with it so I just didn’t do much of it and what little I did was really to high for what they got. So I sat
down and figured out a true system & pricing that works for everyone. I make great money and I get LOTS more calls on catering. I have made up Packages for different
categories. The real big thing I had to figure out was when you were selling your catering service to a big company to feed there employees, or do a grand opening or what ever it might be, they could care less about your hot dogs, they want to know
how is it going to benefit them, how I’m I going to make them look good. So this is where you use your marketing strategies with letters and lots of graphics. So far I’ve
done 8 caterings this month and this Thursday at lunch I’m catering BB@T corporate
offices and this Fri. & Sat. I will be doing a Grand Opening for Big Lots Dept. Store that’s opening in town.